News Analysis

In our May 18 Facebook Live session, Senior Investigator Deborah Bonello spoke with Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists, about the recent murder of a prominent Mexican journalist and the broader security situation for the country's press.

The conversation began with Hootsen discussing his recent trip to Culiacán, in Mexico's Sinaloa state, where renowned journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas was murdered on May 15. Valdez, who earned widespread acclaim for his coverage of organized crime at the investigative news outlet Ríodoce, was killed in broad daylight near the office where he worked.

In addition, Hootsen and Bonello talked about the strong response to Valdez's slaying from Mexico's journalistic community, and how political factors have in the past impeded thorough investigations of violence against journalists, resulting in extreme levels of impunity for these crimes.

Bonello and Hootsen also discussed how rising violence against journalists comes against a backdrop of rising violence more generally in Mexico, in part as a result of a flawed security strategy that has been associated with a long and growing list of grave human rights abuses.

Hootsen linked the risks faced by journalists to the government's broader inability to protect citizens from criminal violence, and explained how journalists are affected in specific ways due to the nature of their work. He said that the threats faced by journalists, particularly those covering organized crime, create a "vicious circle of journalistic impotence" that reduces the ability of the media to inform the public about these important issues.

We also encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, provided that it is attributed to InSight Crime in the byline, with a link to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Investigations

As set out in this report, the legal structure around Honduras' arms trade is deeply flawed. The legislation is inconsistent and unclear as to the roles of different institutions, while the regulatory system is insufficiently funded, anachronistic and administered by officials who are overworked or susceptible to...

Drugs
Extortion
Criminal Cash Flows
Millions of dollars in dirty money circulate constantly around Bajo Cauca, flowing upwards and outwards from a broad range of criminal activities. The BACRIM are the chief regulators and beneficiaries of this shadow economy.

The weapons trade within Honduras is difficult to monitor. This is largely because the military, the country's sole importer, and the Armory, the sole salesmen of weapons, do not release information to the public. The lack of transparency extends to private security companies, which do not have...

Estimates vary widely as to how many legal and illegal weapons are circulating in Honduras. There are many reasons for this. The government does not have a centralized database that tracks arms seizures, purchases, sales and other matters concerning arms possession, availability and merchandising. The laws surrounding...

The department of Nariño in southwest Colombia is the main coca-producing area in the country and in the world. It is a place scarred by poverty and years of armed conflict between guerrillas, the state and paramilitary groups. Perhaps nowhere else in the country are the challenges...

The Bajo Cauca Franchise
BACRIM-Land
Armed Power Dynamics
The BACRIM in places like the region of Bajo Cauca are a typical manifestation of Colombia's underworld today: a semi-autonomous local cell that is part of a powerful national network.

In May 2011, a 26-year-old prison gang leader held 4,000 members of the Venezuelan security forces, backed by tanks and helicopters, at bay for weeks. Humiliated nationally and internationally, it pushed President Hugo Chávez into a different and disastrous approach to the prison system.

Honduras does not produce weapons,[1] but weapons are trafficked into the country in numerous ways. These vary depending on weapon availability in neighboring countries, demand in Honduras, government controls and other factors. They do not appear to obey a single strategic logic, other than that of evading...

Subscribe to Newsletter

Receive InSight Crime's Top Stories Weekly

About Us

InSight Crime is a foundation

dedicated to the study of the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: organized crime. We seek to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime in the Americas by providing the general public with regular reporting, analysis and investigation on the subject and on state efforts to combat it.